by H. Y. Hanna
“It still seems a silly risk to me,” said Nell.
“Maybe that was part of it—the risk, I mean,” said Poppy. “Maybe he got a thrill when he was showing people around, knowing that they were just a few feet away from priceless, illegal plants but they had no clue. Maybe it made him feel smug or something.” She sighed. “You know, I keep thinking of that night when Mannering invited me over to dinner and was showing me around the conservatory. I should have picked up then that he was a bit bonkers. I should have realised that he was exactly the kind of fanatical collector who would do anything to get his hands on a particular plant—I don’t know how I never saw it.”
“Don’t blame yourself, dear,” said Nell. “People can be very good at putting up a false front.”
“Oren saw through him, you know.”
“Who?”
“Oren, Nick’s cat. I think he saved my life.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, first, I think he tried to warn me about Mannering. He was outside the door when Mannering came, making a terrible racket. I thought he was just crying to get in, but I think now that he was actually trying to warn me not to open the door. And then later on, he distracted Mannering by knocking all those tins down in the pantry. If he hadn’t done that, I would never have had the chance to get out of the house.” She shuddered at the memory. “I know it sounds silly and it could all have been coincidence but I feel like Oren knew I was in danger.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised. They do say animals have a sixth sense,” said Nell complacently.
“I wonder if he likes catmint,” mused Poppy. “Maybe I can plant some in the garden for him, as a sort of thank you. And then when he comes over to visit me—”
“But you’re not going to be living in the cottage,” Nell pointed out. “You’re selling it, remember?”
“Oh…” Poppy drew a breath. “Yes, I forgot…”
Nell gave an incredulous laugh. “Oh my lordy Lord, Poppy, how can you forget something like that? If I had that kind of money coming to me, I wouldn’t be able to think about anything else!”
“Yes… I mean, I have been thinking about the cottage,” mumbled Poppy. “I just…” She hesitated.
“What is it, dear?”
Poppy sighed again. “Nothing.”
“Well, I’d best be getting on. If you’re sure about not wanting me to come up—”
“Yes, I’m sure, Nell. I’ll be back in the cottage this evening and I’ll probably come back down to London this weekend to pack my things.”
“Well, give me a call when you’re back in the cottage, dear, just so I know that you’re all right. And make sure you lock the door—”
“Don’t worry, I’ll be fine,” Poppy reassured her.
“I just don’t like the idea of you being out there, all alone at the cottage; a girl in the middle of nowhere—”
“Nell!” Poppy gave an exasperated laugh. “It’s not in the middle of nowhere! It’s in a busy village—and I’ve also got male neighbours on either side.”
Nell snorted. “You mean that author chap?” she said, her tone saying exactly what she thought of Nick.
“Yes, and there’s also Bertie—Dr Bertram Noble—on the other side. And he’s got all sorts of weird and wonderful inventions, so I’m more than amply protected,” said Poppy, laughing.
“Hmm…” Nell didn’t laugh. “I thought the police arrested Dr Noble?”
“That was a mistake,” said Poppy quickly. “I told you, that was just Sergeant Lee jumping to conclusions.”
“Still, you don’t know much about this Dr Noble, do you?” said Nell suspiciously. “How do you even know he’s really who he says he is? What kind of doctor is he anyway?”
“He’s not a medical doctor—he’s a scientist. The ‘Dr’ is just his title. He used to be a professor at Oxford University.”
“Oh?” Nell didn’t sound impressed. “So why isn’t he there anymore?”
Poppy thought of the magazine article she’d read and the mystery surrounding Bertie’s past. There were still many questions unanswered, so many things she wanted to know… but they would have to wait for another day.
“I don’t know—maybe he got tired of academic life or just decided to retire early or something,” she said in a dismissive tone. “Anyway, the good thing is that he’s got a little terrier and you know what good guard dogs they are. So I’m sure if there was any danger, Einstein would sound the alarm.” Although the little dog had singularly failed at his job last night, she reflected wryly.
Still, mention of the dog seemed to mollify Nell and her old friend soon bade her goodbye. Poppy put her phone down, leaned back against the pillows, and let out a sigh, wishing that she had a magazine to help kill the time. She was just wondering if she could convince the ward nurse to let her pop to the hospital shop when there was a commotion by the entrance to the ward and, a moment later, she saw a familiar old man trot into the room, followed by a harassed-looking nurse.
“Sir! Sir! You can’t just wander in here by yourself—you need to report to the nurses’ station first and tell us who you’re visiting,” the nurse said irritably.
Bertie waved a hand. “No need to bother you,” he said, busily going from bed to bed, and peering at each of its occupant. “I’m Dr Bertram Noble and I know who I’m looking for.”
“Bertie!” cried Poppy, sitting up in delight. “How nice of you to come and see me.”
The old man hurried up to her bedside. “Came as soon as I heard the news, my dear. I’m so sorry I wasn’t home last night—it distresses me to think of it! I’m sure Einstein would have heard you otherwise, and sounded the alarm. But as luck would have it, we were at my friend Peter Saunders’s house; he has the most—”
“Wait—what?” Poppy interrupted him. “Whose house?”
Bertie looked at her in bewilderment. “Professor Peter Saunders. He’s an old colleague of mine who still lives in Oxford and he’d invited me over for dinner and a game of chess.”
“Bertie, did he leave you a note recently? Something about a book you’d lent him?” Poppy asked urgently.
The old inventor looked even more bewildered. “Yes, that’s right—how did you know, my dear? He’s going on holiday to the Costa Brava soon, on the Spanish coast, and I lent him a book on the region.”
“He also mentioned something about a ‘secret’ in his note,” persisted Poppy. “He promised not to tell anyone. What was he talking about?”
Bertie frowned. “A secret? I’m afraid I don’t know, dear. Perhaps I’d been telling him about one of my experiments…”
Poppy gasped. “Oh God—I happened to see your note and I thought ‘Pete S’ stood for ‘Pete Sykes’ and that the note was from the murderered man.”
“But I’d never even met Pete Sykes—why would I get a note from him?” asked Bertie with childlike simplicity.
Poppy shook her head, still chuckling. “Never mind, Bertie. It was just a massive misunderstanding on my part.”
He handed her a brown paper bag. “Here you are—I brought you some grapes.”
“Oh, how sweet!” said Poppy, smiling.
Bertie leaned towards her, saying in a loud whisper: “I modified them myself. They taste just like homemade chicken soup—but in easy little globes that you can pop in your mouth. So much more convenient than having to drink from a bowl.”
Poppy paused in the act of pulling off a grape and hastily let go. “Er… that sounds great, Bertie. I… um… actually, I think I’ll save them for later.”
The nurse had followed Bertie over but, after eyeing him suspiciously for a few seconds, finally retreated to the nurses’ station on the other side of the ward. As soon as she was gone, Bertie grinned at Poppy and said, “Someone else wanted to say hello too.”
He leaned forwards again, parting the front of his jacket. Poppy had thought that he seemed unusually tubby and now she realised that what had looked like a bulging belly was actually a little
sling beneath his jacket. A moist black nose and pink tongue emerged suddenly from the folds of the sling and Einstein the terrier gave her face a wet slurp.
“Eeuw!… Uh… hi, Einstein,” said Poppy, gingerly wiping her cheek. She looked hastily around to see if anyone had noticed the dog, then lowered her voice and said:
“Bertie, you know animals aren’t allowed in here! You could get in big trouble.”
“Well, I couldn’t leave him tied up outside on the street,” said Bertie indignantly. “And when I heard that you’d suffered a head injury, I just had to come in and give you this.”
He reached into his jacket once more and produced a strange contraption—a circle of metal spikes and wires that looked like a cross between a crown of thorns and a TV antenna. Before Poppy could stop him, he’d reached up and placed it on her head.
“Er, Bertie—”
“Don’t worry, my dear. I’ve tested it on myself and it works perfectly! Well, it did singe my hair but only slightly,” he assured her. “And I’ve made adjustments to rectify that. Now, I just need to find a socket…”
He held up a plug on the end of a long wire attached to the circle on her head and turned, scanning the wall next to her bed. Poppy gulped and hastily reached up to remove the circle from her head, but before she could, a voice screeched:
“Dr Noble! What do you think you are doing to my patient?”
The nurse rushed up to them, an expression of outrage on her face. She snatched the crown of wires off Poppy’s head and waved it indignantly at Bertie. “What on earth is this?”
“It’s my Neural Cranio-Analeptic Equaliser,” said Bertie proudly. “It helps to heal the brain after a head injury, by synchronising the neural pathways using minute electromagnectic pulses that—”
“What?” the nurse stared at him. “What nonsense are you talking about?”
Bertie bristled. “It’s not nonsense! If you don’t believe me, I’ll show you…”
“No, wait, Bertie—!” cried Poppy, but it was too late.
The inventor had plunged the plug into the socket on the wall. There was a loud crackling sound and then a BANG! as sparks flew from the circle of wires. The nurse squealed and flung it away from herself. It flew across Poppy’s bed and hit the blood-oxygen monitor next to her. There was an even louder cackling sound and suddenly every machine in the room started beeping shrilly. Patients in other beds sat up, looking around in bewilderment. The fire alarm started ringing. Einstein stuck his head out of Bertie’s jacket and began barking at the top of his voice. Poppy winced. The noise was deafening.
“What have you done?” wailed the nurse. “Turn it off! Turn it off!”
Without waiting for Bertie to answer, she lunged across him and yanked the plug out of the wall. The beeping ceased instantly; the fire alarm went silent. Before Poppy could breathe a sigh of relief, however, she heard an ominous gurgling above her head. She looked up. The next moment, water gushed out of the overhead sprinklers and drenched everyone in the room.
“Aaaarrggghhhh!” screeched the nurse. Her hair was plastered to her head and water streamed down her face. She turned to Bertie with a murderous look in her eyes. “You… you—!”
“Well, it might need a bit more tweaking,” said Bertie thoughtfully, gathering the circle of wires and stuffing it, plug and all, back into his inner jacket pocket. “Hmm… perhaps I need to reduce the conductivity… aluminium instead of copper wires—although that introduces the problem of thermal expansion, of course…”
Muttering to himself and completely ignoring the nurse’s furious spluttering, Bertie trotted out of the ward and disappeared. Poppy was slightly sorry that he hadn’t said goodbye to her properly, but on second thoughts—after a glance at the nurse’s still-livid face—decided that it was probably a good thing that Bertie had made himself scarce so quickly.
It took over an hour to restore peace to the ward; Poppy was careful to keep a low profile and that meant she had to give up her idea of popping to the hospital shop for some magazines, since the last thing she wanted to do was face the nurse again. The long hours stretched into the afternoon and she found herself looking up eagerly each time a visitor entered the ward, hoping that it might be someone who’d come to see her.
Not that there is really anyone else, she reminded herself morosely. With her mother gone, there was really only Nell who cared about her. She had no other family—cut off from her mother’s side and with no idea of who her father even was—and she had no close friends: her nomadic life with her mother meant that it had been impossible to put down roots anywhere and develop deep friendships, whether at school or at work. She had never thought that she’d minded it before, but now, for the first time, Poppy felt very alone.
Then she gave a self-deprecating smile. Stop wallowing in self-pity! It had been very nice of Suzanne Whittaker to come and see her that morning, even if it had just been a form of professional courtesy. And for all the mayhem that he had caused, Poppy was incredibly touched that Bertie had come to visit. He might not have been her father but she had a feeling that he could become a friend. A very good friend. As for family… well, she did have a cousin. Poppy grimaced as she thought of Hubert Leach and decided that, actually, she wouldn’t have wanted him to visit her anyway. In fact—
A tall, dark-haired man entered the ward and Poppy felt her heart skip a beat, then she was annoyed with herself as she watched him walk over to another bed. No, it wasn’t Nick Forrest—and why would he come anyway? He wasn’t due back until tonight and even if Suzanne had told him what had happened, he was hardly going to cancel the rest of his book tour just to rush back and see her. They barely knew each other.
Her thoughts were interrupted by a doctor arriving to do a ward round and she was delighted when he gave her the “all-clear”. Hurriedly, she got dressed, collected her few possessions, and prepared to leave the ward. As she was passing the nurses’ station, she paused to get her discharge documents and was relieved to see that the previous nurse had gone off duty. The new woman smiled at Poppy and handed her some papers, then glanced at her name on the forms and said:
“Oh! Miss Lancaster—there’s something here for you. I think the last nurse forgot to give it to you.”
She reached beneath the counter and lifted up a beautiful bouquet of roses, wrapped in gilt paper and ribbons. Poppy caught her breath.
“For… for me?” she said in disbelief.
The woman nodded and handed it across. “Yes, there’s a card addressed to you.”
Poppy took the bouquet carefully, staring at it in wonder. She had never been given fresh flowers before and had certainly never been able to afford a luxurious arrangement like this. She had never seen a rose bouquet like this before either: these were not the stiff, whorled, artificially perfect blooms that she normally saw at florists—no, these roses came in all shapes and sizes, from fat buds of antique cream to big cabbage-like blooms in shades of pink, mauve, rose, and lilac. They reminded her of the roses she’d glimpsed at Hollyhock Cottage—romantic, old-fashioned cupped roses, filled with fragrant petals and heady with perfume.
She buried her nose in the bouquet and inhaled deeply, feeling like she was in a dream. Then she noticed the card tucked in amongst the leaves. She opened it and chuckled as she read the two words:
from Oren.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Poppy watched the water gush out of the kitchen tap and into the old galvanised-metal jug she had found in the greenhouse. When the jug was full, she lifted it out of the sink and lowered the bouquet of roses carefully into the water. She would have liked to have put the bouquet in a proper vase but there were none to be found in the cottage. Still—she set the jug at the end of the kitchen counter and stood back to admire the effect—the rustic old container suited the roses somehow; the muted tones of the faded blue metal complemented the soft pinks, creams, and lilacs. For a man who professed to care very little about flowers, Nick Forrest certainly knew how to choose a
bouquet.
She was just wondering whether to untie the ribbon still wound around the rose stems when she heard the sound of knocking at the front door. She looked up, startled. She wasn’t expecting anyone—other than perhaps a smug ginger tomcat come to welcome her home. But clever as he was, she didn’t think Oren had mastered the ability to knock yet.
She went to the front door but hesitated with her hand on the doorknob as a sense of déjà vu struck her. There had been a knock on the door yesterday, just like this, and she had stood in the same place, ready to fling the door open. The memory of Charles Mannering’s terrifying attack was still uncomfortably fresh in her mind.
“Who is it?” she called nervously.
“It’s your cousin, Hubert,” came a familiar nasal voice.
Poppy felt a mixture of relief and dismay. Opening the door, she found Hubert Leach standing on the doorstep, a smarmy smile plastered on his face.
“Cousin Poppy!” he cried, reaching out an arm as if to hug her.
Poppy hastily moved back, out of reach, and Hubert took advantage of her retreat to step into the house.
“I’m so glad I caught you. They told me you were in hospital—sorry, I couldn’t come to visit… busy, busy… you know how it is!—but you’re obviously out now and looking well. Anyway, I just had to come and see how you were… oh, and I brought you these.”
He thrust a bunch of limp carnations at her.
“Oh… er… thank you,” said Poppy, taking the flowers. “Um… would you like a cup of tea?”
As she stood in the kitchen waiting for the kettle to boil, Poppy couldn’t help looking surreptitiously at her cousin from underneath her eyelashes. She felt slightly ashamed now that she had suspected him of being involved in Pete Sykes’s death. Okay, Hubert was brash and rude, but there was a big difference between being a boor and being a murderer. There was still the mystery surrounding his odd conversation with Dr Goh, though…
